This is a post that I did for our blog at Creative Solutions. I felt it should be shared here with you.
Yesterday I talked about how 75 million people are suffering from mental illness. That means that if you know three people, there is a good statistical chance that at least one of them is suffering from a mental illness.
If one third of the people you know are suffering from mental illness think about how many people you know who have been affected by loving someone who is struggling with a mental health issue. How many people do our lives touch? How many parents are struggling because their son or daughter is struggling with an anxiety disorder?
The next time that you are in a public space where there is a gathering of people going on look around you. Estimate the average number of people and divide by three. That will give you a rough estimate of the number of people dealing with a mental health issue, then multiply by say 1.5 (I'd go with two but it's probably a little less than a full two times. That will give you a rough number of the amount of people who's lives are being touched by mental illness.
This is why raising awareness is so important. Of course, this is also why I think seeing a counselor is also important. What we are hoping to achieve at Creative Solutions is to increase the number of people who can find help. We realize that we won't be able to help everyone but we would like to see the number go higher than it is. We would like to see the number of people who are suffering go down because there is more access to help.
Ultimately, we believe that better access will help people achieve success over their mental illness. That will allow them to change their lives.
Ultimately changing lives is the goal here. That sounds good to me.